[mindwaves]

I am unfamiliar with this system, but I need to write a report on it. I know some of the capabilities of such a Electronic Medical Record system, but what I want to know is how the information is fed to the system.

Like if someone gets a cat scan, is the x-ray automatically fed to the EMR system electronically? Or does someone has to physically scan in the x-ray into the EMR system? Or does it depend on the machine or system? How are the images/audio files/text files inputted into the EMR system? Is it all manual or is automated somehow? Is the EMR system just simply a database?

I know there are some nurses here so any information about the capabilities of such a system would be most appreciated!

[peeb]

It depends on the system. There is not one. You might want to look at what the UK is doing now though, trying to get what they call a common spine system, or something, to coordinate medical records.

[mindwaves]

So in general, they do not automatically import the x-ray images into the system? Someone has to scan them in manually?

[mdc]

It depends on the system. There are a few that are fairly big right now. One that I have been installing for a lot of clients here in Florida is called eClinical.
In short there are "folders" for each patient and nurses can scan documents directly into patient's folders.

One of our clients (dental place) has a large CT scanner and they have to use some software (I forget the name) on a PC which controls the CT scanner and creates the scan image. They use WinOMS for their Practice Management software; which accesses the digital CT scans.

We have some other clients who use PracticeStudio (can't find a link) and others who use Rapid EMR software.

[peeb]

Lots of places use more or less paper records, with a computer that simply keeps track of appointments and prescriptions.